As you read this, pupils and teachers will be in the heroic final weeks of the longest of the school year's three terms. Autumn will have turned to winter. The number of daylight hours will have diminished. Many pupils and teachers will be running on empty fatigued and nursing illnesses.
At the same time, schools will be delivering breakneck programmes of Christmas performances and events on top of everything else: mock examinations, end of term assessments and writing reports.
Whilst I’m all for a bit of resilience, it hardly seems an arrangement likely to deliver optimal performance for either children or their teachers. We are all too aware of the pressures on our young people and the impact they have on their well-being and mental health.
Whilst there will be those who have certain views about teachers’ holidays and working hours, it is also true that the profession is struggling to recruit and retain good quality teachers. Like other caring professions, teaching has a high degree of burn-out particularly amongst good staff. In the run-up to Christmas, I will be keeping a particularly close eye on the well-being of our pupils and staff.
I wonder about the structure of the school year. It is a relic from the days when we needed children to help gather the harvest during the long summer holidays.
Particularly at this time of year, term-time feels part of a boom-and-bust cycle. Pupils and staff seek to survive lengthy periods of intense, hard work only to flop into a school holiday, recover over one or two weeks, and start all over again.
I wonder whether a brave new model for the school year, fit for the 21st century and more evenly spread across the calendar might address some of the concerns we have over pupils’ well-being and mental health as well as support teacher recruitment and retention.
In the meantime, roll on the holidays and the chance for pupils, staff and parents to relax, recover and recharge.